Morning & Evening Devotional Reading– June 25– Evening

by Charles H. Spurgeon, Revised and Edited by William C. Neff

“The dove found no rest for the sole of her foot.'”

—Genesis 8:9

Jesus Christ is our ark of safety and salvation. And I wonder, dear Reader, if you can find rest anywhere in the world apart from Him? If you can, then be assured that your faith in Christ is empty. Are you satisfied with anything short of consciously knowing that you belong to Him and He belongs to you? If so, then anguish and calamity be unto you. If you profess to be a Christian, yet find full satisfaction in worldly pleasures and pursuits, your profession is false. If your soul can find rest in the bed and warm blankets of sin, then you are a hypocrite; you are far from Christ.

On the other hand, however, if you feel that your indulging in sin without punishment is itself a punishment; if you know that you could have the whole world, but it would only bring you misery; if you crave to know God as your God; then be of good courage, because you are a child of God. With all your sins and imperfections, receive this for your comfort. If your soul has no rest in sin, then you are different from the sinner without Christ. If you are still craving after something better, Christ has not forgotten you, for you have not quite forgotten him.

The believer cannot live without his Lord. We cannot live on the sands of wilderness; we must have the manna from heaven. We grow tired of searching for drops of moisture from the empty bottles we carry with us; we must have the cool, refreshing water that flows from the rock of Christ Himself. When you feed on him your soul can sing, “He has satisfied my mouth with good things, so that my youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”

But if you don’t have him, your bursting wine vat and well-filled barns can give you no such satisfaction; instead, you can only lament over all you have and say, “Emptiness of emptiness; all is emptiness.” [M&E]